Four of My Dream-Based Poems

[Tarot card from the Rider/Waite/Smith deck]


I don’t have any special reason for sharing these four poems below. Other than they are all dream-based and have been languishing in my files for years. Truth be told, I only rarely send my work out for publication, so this is not an unusual fate for the vast majority of my writing.

All of these older poems I’ve been posting on this blog, though, have had exposure when I was doing poetry readings and performances (“back in the day”) in the New York City poetry community. I used to enjoy doing poetry readings, once I got past my initial terrible stage fright, that is, and felt a rapport developing with the audience.

I hope you will enjoy this sampling of my old dream based poems.

How to Finish a Poem Started in a Dream

Curve of sanity,
stand against chaos,
translucent
egg of reason.

Here,
hold it up to sunrise.

Warm it
between your fingers.

See what births
from its beckoning center.

Do not lose
this serpentine image
beneath the burning
of its own rising.

Let it insinuate
questing coils
to the deepest branches
of your waking mind,

build and bind
unknown worlds
with its turning.

* * * *

A dream

A young dark-haired woman
in a white bridal gown
is alone in a living room.

It has dark wood paneling
and a mantel over a fireplace,
in the style of at least fifty years ago.

She is wondering why
she keeps being moved
from room to room
in this house.

She asks out loud,
of no one in particular
“Why was Uncle plastered in the wall?”

As if in answer to a silly riddle
a voice replies
“Because there are no bullets left.”

* * * *

The Trees Within

These ancient woods that dwell within
hold the broken sky together.

Tall familiar friends, whose sides I climbed
in other times to mend the sky.

Wise ones, whose shadows I curl up beneath
and dream of climbing dark sweet bark
that creaks and nods,

dream of being offered up to sky again,
to touch and heal, rooted.

* * * *

On Collecting

The woman in my dream
writes poem after poem.
She is tall and golden, with a smile
like a crescent moon lazily rocking
on the rim of the world.

She reels in line after languid
line, her words strung like nebulae
in which my envy spins,
a shadow catch.

Wakefulness intrudes,
trailing a stark wire across
the sky on which dark birds
perch, waiting to escape through
the blue door of dawn.

Her lines unravel, the dream
more a black hole now that traps
its own lingering light.

I cull and hoard lines from her lost poems
like Grandma in the Great Depression
saved the least bit of string, knotted end
to end and wound round and round
in a motley globe.

* * * *

Resource: Artists Without Frontiers–Poetry & Dream Imagery Article.

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.